Users may now readily receive various types of video items from network-accessible services and other data processing systems. In a typical case, a service may present a series of representative frames for respective available video items. A user can select one of these frames to play or download the corresponding video item.
One shortcoming of the above-described approach is that a representative frame may not accurately convey the contents of the corresponding video item. The user may click on the representative frame to watch the full video item. But this process may be time-consuming and cumbersome when the user desires to investigate many video items.
Many techniques exist for summarizing a video item by forming a condensed version of the video item. For example, one technique summarizes a video item by producing a fast-forward version of the video item. These techniques may have various shortcomings. For example, some of these techniques may produce an unsatisfactory user experience. Further, some techniques may not be ideally suited to quickly communicating the subject matter of the video item. For example, while certain techniques may condense an entire “story” conveyed by a video item, this may provide too much information to the user; this is especially the case where the intent of a service is to convey the basic nature of the video item without revealing its entire story line.